Extending Google AdWords with Ad Extensions

In the ever-expanding world of Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click advertising, Google has again bolstered its list of available ad extensions that you can include alongside your paid ads. These ad extensions are essentially “add-on” features that can improve the look and feel of your ads, improve click-through, and help convert customers more effectively.

Here’s the list of available ad extensions in Google AdWords, including how each one can be used to bolster performance of your advertising account:

This extension ties directly into a Google Places for Businessaccount, where you can establish listings for each of your company’s locations. While you do not need to use a Google Places account to add location extensions, you’ll get much more in-depth statistics about its performance, if you do.

Call Extension

Displays a phone number next to your ad.

Extremely valuable, especially on mobile devices.

Google strongly encourages the use of this extension because it is usually improves your chances of converting leads into paying customers if you can get them on the phone, directly engaged with your sales staff. If a user clicks the phone number to call it on a mobile device, you pay on a cost-per-click basis. If a user calls the number directly, you do not pay.

Incorporates additional links to other pages of your site into your ad.

Provides obvious visual benefit to your Google.com text search ads.

Say you want to bolster your ad that appears when a user searches for your company or brand name. In addition to the ad headline, text, and standard URL, you might want to include a direct link to your Free Quote Request form, or your Testimonials page, or perhaps you might want to link directly to your Clearance page that promotes products with big discounts. These clicks cost the same as clicks on your regular ad.

While you could use regular ad text to present a coupon, but the best way to roll this out, since coupons might be temporary, would be to implement an offer extension and specify all of the necessary parameters. A user can click to find out what the parameters are and, as noted, you can track redemptions with AdWords conversion tracking.

Because Google is aggressively pushing Google+ as a social media and marketing platform, this is one way to bolster your Google+ page’s activity. It’s easy to add this extension if you have a working Google+ account, and there’s no downside to doing it.

Dynamic Search Ad Extension

Automatically shows your ad based on the content of your website.

No need to choose keywords, you simply tell Google when you add a page to your website or take it down, and Google will dynamically update your ad accordingly.

Traditional text search ads use keywords to trigger ads. With Dynamic Search Ads, while your ad will still appear when someone does a keyword search, the criteria for how the ad gets triggered aren’t based on keywords you specifically set. This is an advanced feature of AdWords, one which we will blog about more specifically, in the future. Sign up here to stay in the loop!

Google AdWords APP Extension

App Extension

Includes a direct download link for a downloadableapp, under your ad.

Especially useful if you want to direct people to use that app on a mobile device.

If you have a new app that you want to roll out, you could of course promote it on your website and in email blasts. But, being able to include it within your PPC ad will simply give it much greater exposure than you might otherwise get, and immediate access for mobile users.

Summary

Google AdWords is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Capitalizing on all its features, including Ad Extensions, can be very rewarding and profitable if done properly.